"Wonder how fast they're going to dump all the years invested in their own autopilot. It's just like the Solaris, SCO, HPUX developers getting Linux to run on their workstations for the 1st time, 20 years ago."

"About time someone finally made a manned copter that really looked like a speeder bike, with a saddle seat instead of a standing pilot about to fall over & get chopped up. Could imagine someone riding it in ground effect."

"Who knows why he used an optical projector instead of RF for the synchronization pulses, but in this age of eternally rising valuations with no need to ship anything, he could have just as easily used smoke signals."

Most diy droners are RC modelers who just want to automate their favorite model plane. I came from an image processing, software, & robotics background, not an RC modeling background, so my focus is on flight control, image acquisition, & blogs that no-one reads.

Jack Crossfire's Blog

Holy subprime seasons. While it was always possible for an entire neighborhood to synchronize its lights, it wasn't possible to actually see it until last year. It's really a sight that cost a fortune until the rise of the quad, higher sensitivity cameras, & then the brushless gimbal. Of course, flying a quad that high above a neighborhood is a very nerve…

With so many unemployed programmers, it was only a matter of time before someone would try to free the bits & upload some videos. We'll see how long this lasts until the indy movie studios crush the rebellion. These videos covered what currently are the 3 mane copters, in a rare appearance without any editing.

Comment Wall (10 comments)

Interesting reading. I spent some time with your blog at rcgroups, noting in particular your application of artificial neural nets. I may have missed a jump in your progression, but are you still running the lwneuralnet on a gumstix ? Just wondering, as most neural net libraries use floating point, but the gumstix only has fpu emulation, which is not fast.

Reason I ask is that I converted a simple back prop library to integer math and built it into my firmware, but have just started to think about how to incorporate it into actual operation. As you already have real-world experience in integrating back prop functions, I wondered if you wanted to give the code a try (on the ground) to see if the integer approximations are sufficiently accurate. I map 0.0 : 1.0 into 0 : 1024. If interested, code is here. Let me know if you have a chance to experiment - I'd appreciate some feedback.

Converted lwneuralnet to integer a long time ago. It worked for solving the neural network but not for back propagation. Back propagation required more precision & full range beyond 0-1. 2048 lookup table entries was the largest before the cache overflowed.

Thanks for your answer. I alreadi recovered the archive. Could you please send me some more detals concerning the hardware(components, electric connections, procedures for preliminar adjustement of parameters, etc); something "pense bete" for a beginer in the field. Yours Georges

sorry, for asking these questions. I am trying to design a board that I want to sell in the $80-100 price range. so trying to understand the target costs. any help would be appreciated. Just for fun, not going to make any money on it. Thanks.

Most of the people on diydrones sell products through Sparkfun. The standard arrangement is to add 40% to the price & Sparkfun adds another 40% to the price. It's no secret. A place like Cloudcap adds 1000% to the parts. Personally working in Indian outsourcing where they expect a 12 hour / 6 day commitment & if you're spending evenings selling your own product instead of your boss's, it better produce a 1000% return or you're out. All your time is company time in outsourcing.